


Like Alaska

by newsbypostcard



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:23:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He gets as far as Boise, Idaho on stolen gas before he realizes he can’t cross the Canadian border. Not with his ID. Not with ID he didn’t even have.</p><p>  <em>Fucking Alaska.</em></p><p>Not even close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Alaska

**Author's Note:**

> If you survived the final season of Breaking Bad, you can survive this fic no problem. Nevertheless: warnings for violence, domestic violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, repeated references to murder, death, captivity, and mental illness. The finale is specifically spoiled; significant events in seasons 3-5 are spoiled.

_Alaska, bitch!_

He drives, because he doesn’t have the money or the non-fugitive status to fly, and, _fuck_. Fuck, fucking fuck. Shit’s real, yo. Shit’s really real; it’s never been realer. He’s out of cash -- threw it all out the fucking car. Was that months ago? He’s completely lost track of time, and for the first time, it wasn’t drug-related.

Well -- it _was_ drug related. He just hadn’t ingested any. In … months, probably. Yeah. It was probably months.

Why the fuck _hadn’t_ he taken any meth, anyway?

The name echoes in his head, and he leans over the steering wheel to feel it dig into his chest every time it does: _Brock. It was, somehow, for the sake of Brock._

It’s like every time he crosses the state line he switches back between laughter and tears.

\---

He gets as far as Boise, Idaho on stolen gas before he realizes he can’t cross the Canadian border. Not with his ID. Not with ID he didn’t even have.

Briefly, he beats his hands on the steering wheel. _Fucking Alaska._ There was literally nowhere else to go.

Then, he calls Saul.

There’s this distant clicking on the other end of the line as the automated voice tells him the number’s been disconnected and, terrified, he snaps his (stolen) phone in half; chucks it in the nearest garbage can; sits; thinks; and, fucking stupidly, _cries_.

Yeah … shit’s really, really real.

\---

“The fuck happen to your face?” asks some asshole in the bar where he’s drinking a beer he may or may not pay for with five bucks he found on the ground in the parking lot where he’d last been siphoning gas.

He stares straight ahead into the bar; doesn’t bother to turn. “Angry cat,” he gravels. His voice is wrecked from the screaming he did in the car over the last 18 hours, all the demons he’d tried to exorcise through his lungs; and something about in his tone makes fuckface sit the hell down and shut the fuck up. 

He smirks distantly around the mouth of his bottle and is blessedly left alone to nurse his beer. The bartender takes pity on him and serves him another, on the house, and he leaves him the whole five. 

He guesses it pays to show up to places looking and sounding like you were on the bad end of a fight with a woodchipper. He makes a note to make a point of it.

When he gets back in the car, he turns on the radio for the first time, settles on some heavy rock station, and keeps screaming along. 

It’s, whaddyacall, cathartic, or whatever.

He decides not to bother thinking too hard on whether or not he could quit screaming if he tried.

\---

Oregon isn’t so shit, anyway.

It’s like the polar opposite of the ABQ. Lush. Green. Artsy. There’s something compelling about that. 

He settles in Portland, because he figures if there’s anywhere a fugitive without money is going to thrive, it’s gonna be under some fucking bridge in Portland.

He keeps the beard. He doesn’t bother to cut his hair. The thrift store had this, like, stitched poncho thing that he bought mostly ironically but that actually kind of suited whatever new vibe he was trying to establish. He likes it. The clerk told him it brought out his eyes. She wasn’t wrong.

For some fucking reason, he calls himself Andrew. The name _Jesse_ grates on him every time he hears it, and he’s glad to be rid of it. He crashes under this bridge, mostly, sleeps in his car or under the stars when it suits him. He re-learns basic carpentry from some under-the-bridge burnout who’s known only as Denny-Dave and starts selling little trinkets he sculpts out of discarded lumbermill planks for enough money to buy food, gas, and the occasional toke. He dreads his hair. He spends hours sitting around the fire shooting the shit about whatever existential quandary du jour is touring the ranks.

It doesn’t suck. It does not fucking suck.

\---

He leans his face up against the window of some sports bar in the early afternoon one day to see his own face splattered on the TV, the caption _Uncertainty around Heisenberg’s Principle Collaborator_ splain beneath it; and he is briefly terrified that he’ll be recognized. He bolts down the street, panic gripping at him in a way it hadn’t done in solid weeks, getting him ten blocks away in solid seconds before his own reflection stops him in his tracks; and he stands, gripping at the window that shows him this scraggly dude with this intense beard and dreadlocked hair and scars still all over his face, and he realizes:

No one will ever fucking recognize him. He could stand on a pool table at the local dive and shout, “I’m Jesse Pinkman, bitch!” and it would take everyone enough time to even consider that he might’ve been that he would’ve been able to get way clear of the city before anyone was sent after him.

He reaches out to touch the face of his reflection; he’s surprised when his fingers hit only glass.

He only lasts in Portland another two weeks.

\---

Denny-Dave gives him his ID. “The day I check with the man before I do what I want is the day I die,” he says, grinning toothlessly at him; and he equal parts rues that he looks anywhere close to a younger version of Denny-Dave and hopes to Christ that Denny-Dave isn’t a felon.

He isn’t a felon. He looks like enough shit to pull off being David Colione, as long as he advances his date of birth by twenty years. By some fucking miracle, US customs lets him back into the ‘States on the other side despite the shitty patch job on the license. And then he’s finally in fucking Alaska.

_Alaska, bitch._

He makes up some bullshit job about a belly-up freelance carpentry job and lands something part-time in Anchorage. He cannot fucking believe his luck. He does not hate being David Colione.

\---

He meets Esmerelda one night at the bar. He’s staying away from drugs but he’s got this thing with alcohol now. It’s gotta be better than meth, he reasons, so fuck it -- the only thing to do in Anchorage besides dogsledding and icefishing is drinking, anyway, so he can dig it. She tends bar at his favourite dive, and he’s not the only one hunched over his drink at the bar every night but he is the youngest one, and now that the circles under his eyes are finally starting to fade into wisdom he thinks he might approach attractive again -- at least, comparatively, given Anchorage.

She’s kind to him; gives him slightly more alcohol per shot than her job probably allows; asks him well-meaningly about his life. “I build things,” he said vaguely the first time, then specified when her gaze softened -- “chairs, mostly.” She says she likes chairs, and he likes her; but every twitch of his smile tugs a line attached to his heart. He only returns to that bar on particularly lonely days, or the days he remembers what a piece of unholy shit he is and feels like he shouldn’t be as lucky as he has been.

“I’m fine to call you Chairs Mostly for as long as it takes, beardy bear,” she tells him once, pouring him a large whiskey, “but you could give me your name, too, if you wanted.”

He looks up at her, lets the self-loathing sink within him along with the burn that works its way down his throat. “David,” he husks, tipping his glass toward her.

“Esme,” she says with a smile. She tops him up generously. He tips her most of his salary.

\---

He is bumped up to full-time on the same day that law enforcement resources in the quest for Jesse Pinkman are officially relocated.

Eight months after Mr. White was found dead in the lab where he’d been held captive and he’s referring to himself in the third person. _Jesse Pinkman._ Who the fuck is that? Some kid down in the continental 48 who got in over his head. He wishes him well. He hopes he’s in Alaska now, doing carpentry or whatever.

The news is still flashing across the television when he wanders into the bar, but he doesn’t realize it until he’s midway through his first beer. Then he gapes at it, stares blankly at the coverage, where FOX News assholes are talking about some “Blue Legacy” like it was a movie title or some shit. It had stopped being altogether manufactured, law enforcement tells us, but shipments were still arriving, seemingly by boat, in the Czech Republic; in Finland; in Romania; in Alaska.

_Alaska, bitch._

His stomach drops to the floor and he stumbles out the door without a glance behind him, in spite of the pursuit of Esme’s calls. He takes a long, long fucking walk. He looks constantly over his shoulder. He goes home only at sunrise.

\---

His boss is one committed son of a bitch and shows up at his door a few hours later when he doesn’t show up to work on time.

“Don’t make me call Paul,” came the threat from the other side of the door; and finally he frowns, crawls out of bed, throws the door open while still in his underwear.

“The fuck did you just say?”

“There’s this guy I work for,” Rick says casually, like it was nothing. “Paul Moranis. Runs a law firm down in Nebraska. Has a real vested interest in making sure you stay on your feet, you understand? So you don’t show up, I’d have to call Paul. I don’t want to call Paul. Don’t make me call Paul.”

He blinks, leads with his chin. “Are you fucking talking about Saul Goodman?”

“Saul Goodman does not exist nor has he ever existed.” Rick clears his throat. “So far as I know. All I know is a Paul Moranis keeps paying me to pay you. Says some _White knight_ set this shit up for you a long time ag--”

He slams the door in Rick’s face. He leans against it until Rick goes away. He packs a bag. He breathes heavily into a paper sack.

He needs a drink.

He goes to the bar.

\---

Esme tastes as delicious as she smells, as she sounds, as the drinks that she pours. He’s drunk. He’s over the moon. He’s balls-deep in Esmerelda. He’s coming already.

“Jesus, Jesus, I’m sorry,” he whispers against her neck. “I swear to fucking god, I can do better than that, I’m not usually … drunk.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” she soothes; and he takes it honestly. Her hair is long and spills over her shoulders to cover her breasts and it’s too beautiful to brush away. He settles for cupping her breast over her hair and hopes for more nudity in the future. “You look like you’re having a hard time lately.”

“Time is hard. Every second is hard.”

“You want to tell me about it? It’s in my job description.”

“No,” he whispers, presses his lips to her shoulder. “It’s just too fucking much for one person sometimes.”

“Okay.” She pauses, rakes a hand through his hair. “Just next time, David -- and I’m not angry -- it’s Esmerelda, not Andrea.”

He seizes as the dread fills him, rising through as though being poured directly in him; and then he cries. He can’t help it. She grips at him as tightly as he grips at her, and he is drunk and right now he’s David Colione and this is cathartic, or, whatever, and this is Alaska, bitch; but at the end of the day, he’s still Jesse Pinkman, on some basic level. And that’s still the realest shit, whether he tries to ignore it or not.

\---

It’s innocuous enough.

It’s Esme in an alley, and then it’s some skinny asshole in the alley, and then it’s blue rocks in the alley, and he’s there to see it all happen. He’s far enough away to stay unnoticed but close enough to see the blue in harsh contrast to the white of freshly fallen snow, and that’s _his fucking meth_ in _motherfucking Alaska_ , and fuck, fuck, the real shit keeps dropping harder than acid, doesn’t it?

He bursts into work and throws his hands down on Rick’s work table. “ _What do you know?_ ” he shouts, and he hasn’t felt this much like Jesse Pinkman in a long time.

“Pardon?” Rick asks, eyebrows seeping false innocence.

“What do you know? About who I am? What I did?”

Rick blinks, apparently contemplating how much to reveal; but then his head shifts to the side, and he says it with perfect serenity: “You’re what they’re calling the Uncertainty Principle of the Blue Legacy.”

He’s livid. He’s seething. He covers his face with his arms to stifle the scream. “ _Fuck!_ ”

“Look -- David, Jesse, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that you’re a competent carpenter. I thought I was going to hate paying you do to shit work, but you do _good work_ , kid. Your past doesn’t mean two shakes to me if it means you make good products.”

He lifts some object off the table and throws it aside. It splinters in the distance. “Don’t ever fucking say the word ‘product’ to me,” he growls. He’s a hair’s breadth away from completely fucking losing it. He thinks he’s been on this brink for months. He’s not sure he remembers a time when he wasn’t.

“Is it your guy?” he shouts. Rick blinks and recoils as spittle hits his face.

“Is who my guy?”

“The asshole dealing Blue up here! Who d’you think?”

Rick blinks. “What?”

“There was a guy. In the alley. Selling Esme some blue. I didn’t even fucking know she _used_ , man, why didn’t this _click for me_ , of _course_ that’s why she’s attracted to me, _Jesus!_ She probably knows who I am!”

“Slow down, kid,” Rick plies; and suddenly there’s a knife in his hand and he’s brandishing it at Rick. 

Old habits die hard.

“Don’t fucking _call_ me a _kid_.” It reminds him of Mike. His stomach knots; his teeth clench.

“All right,” Rick says, brandishing his hands aloft. “All right. I don’t know anything about any meth. I don’t deal. Just because I don’t care about your history, doesn’t mean I distribute your product. I knew Blue was around but I thought it would’ve been defunct by now. With Heisenberg dead and you up here--”

“Does Saul know anything?” He’s all sound and fury; he’s thrusting the knife closer to Rick. “Answer me!”

“Who’s Saul?”

“Saul! Saul Goodm-- Oh, fucking Christ -- Paul! Whoever! Jesus! Does he know anything!”

“I very much doubt it,” Rick replies, too calmly. “He’s made a point of washing his hands of everything to do with this, except where you’re concerned. And he does it begrudgingly too, I might add. Something about how you assaulted him? Though,” his gaze flits down to the blade being brandished at his chest, “I’m starting to get the picture on that one.”

He feels himself deflating. Lydia is dead but the distribution wears on. Try to extract every bit of profit from the pounds upon pounds of meth he produced on his own. No reason why it wouldn’t continue, right? When has this industry ever halted for death?

The blade clatters to the ground. “I can’t,” he whispers. “This can’t come back. I can’t do this anymore.”

“I think,” Rick says quietly, crouching to pick up the blade with slow and fluid movement, “it’s gonna be stuck with you no matter where you go, kid.”

Rick cringes, waiting for him to snap at him again; but he only backs away, turning to run blindly toward the exit, sobs wrenching their way out of him again and again until he falls, defeated, to his hands and knees on the pavement outside -- until Rick takes him quietly inside and sets him up with a pillow and blanket on one of the worktables.

\---

“Rick tells me you’re worse for the wear.”

It’s Saul, or Paul, or whoever the fuck.

“I’m -- fine.” Rick called while he was out cold on the worktable, and Spaul had pulled some information together. The phone is ancient. Spaul’s resources must be running ragged.

“Are you using?”

“ _No._ ”

“You sure?”

“Yes I’m fucking _sure,_ Jesus. I only found out Blue was up here a few hours ago because I was gonna go visit my girlfriend, who happened to be buying -- which, what the fuck, Saul?”

“It’s Paul now.”

He blinks incredulously. “Oh, is it Paul now? _Like I give a shit!_ ”

“There’s rehab money if you want it.”

“Enough already! I’m not using!”

“You drinking?”

“No!” He pauses. “Maybe. Look, whatever! Give me an alternative! Some fuckwad manipulated me into killing three people. Two women I loved are dead because of him, and oh, by the way, my entire life is down the toilet! You want me to be sober? Fuck that! How about you suck my dick?”

“Okay, well, you don’t sound like you’re using.”

“Quit changing the subject! You want to tell me what’s going on or what?”

Spaul sighs on the other end of the line, and he pinches his nose. “It’s either standard fare end-distribution, kid, or else someone’s emulated your formula.”

“Not really possible, yo. That’s a lot of methylamine to steal from Nowheresville, New Mexico.”

“Some reports have surfaced about impure meth that’s dyed blue. People trying to profit off the brand after it’s long dead, exploiting the Blue Legacy and whatnot. Soon we might be seeing pink meth at this rate.”

“So it might not be the Blue?” His heart was fluttering. He felt like ripping his hair out.

“Unfortunately, kid, up there it probably is. Rumour has it that certain associates were exporting to all kinds of desolate areas through her -- their, whatever -- distribution companies. Hitting ports mostly, of which Anchorage is a major one. You know how it goes. Your local is going to be clear, or cloudy, fuck if I know the mechanics here, but there’s no legacy to emulate north of the 49th. It’s all continental news as far as Alaskan druglords are concerned. The biggest problem they have with the Blue is the few pounds of it that do hit the Alaskan market tend to lead in a minor dip in sales in the locally-made product. That’s it.”

He buries his face in his hands, thanks Spaul for whatever bullshit just came out of his mouth, hands the phone back to Rick.

_Alaska, bitch._

“Yo, you still want me to come into work tomorrow?” he says once Rick’s off the phone. He hasn’t said ‘yo’ in months, until today. He’s thought it. He hasn’t said it.

“It’s like I said, David,” Rick offered affably. “You do good work. Paul’s still paying for your part-time, but I’m paying you for the other half of that now. You keep doing good work, I’ll keep paying you for it. It’s real simple like that.”

He nods; scoots off the table; gets drunk; shows up at work on time the next day.

Rick gives him only certain tools to work with for a while. They don’t talk about it.

\---

He doesn’t say anything about the Blue to Esme. He drinks less when she’s around. He drinks considerably more when she isn’t.

She offers it to him casually one night after they’ve done the nasty and her hair is spilling over her shoulders in that way that he tends to be helpless to resist. “You heard about this stuff, right?” she asks, apparently thrown by his horrified stare. “It was all over the news for months.”

He forces himself to soften. “This that blue meth from Arizona or whatever?”

“New Mexico, yeah. That Heisenberg stuff. Hear it’s running out, thought I’d give it a whirl. You in?”

He stretches his fingers and sets them against her skin to stop them from shaking.

“Yeah,” he says. The tremor stays out of his voice. “Why not.”

\---

It’s definitely Blue.

It’s definitely _his_ Blue.

It lights that particular sort of fire, the one that’s not as good as Mr. White’s but the one that still strikes a match as it burns.

He’s briefly proud of his handiwork; in some dark recess of his brain, Mr. White’s voice is still praising him, telling him that he _applied himself_. Yeah, bitch -- he applied himself. And he got 92% purity on a bad day. 

And now here it was -- all the way up here, finding him, after all this time.

_Alaska, bitch._

\---

She definitely knows who he is.

“We’re running out,” she says quietly. It’s three weeks later and they’re still using, or using again, because, fuck it, _fuck, it_ , if your past is gonna chase you all the fucking way up to goddamned _Alaska_ then you’re never going to escape it, right?

But then she asks, “Why don’t you make us some more?” in this voice seeping with innocence that makes his spine try to crawl its way right out of his body, and he tries to escape anyway -- dresses in instants and flies out the door as soon as he’s able. 

He slams it behind him; the walls shake. 

He’s blocks away before he realizes that it’s his own house he just left.

\---

A month later, when she keeps pressing on why he isn’t manufacturing anymore when he’s so clearly good at it, he decides she’s probably a cop. His house is bugged. She’s trying to coax a confession out of him. He has to end it. He can’t end it.

This is never over.

\---

She’s not a cop.

She is, however, threatening to press charges for assault -- and with the finger-shaped bruises left on her arms, why shouldn’t she? She knows what leverage this threat has, given who he _really_ is -- who he can never stop being.

After she leaves for the last time he sets his fists against his eyes and screams again, for hours, he can’t help it, and it’s as though he’s leaving New Mexico for the first time again. It’s as though he’s constantly trying to leave New Mexico behind. Almost a year since Mr. White died and he’s still fucking trying to leave it behind.

It still follows him wherever he goes.

_Alaska, bitch._

He is still Jesse fucking Pinkman.

\---

One morning, without planning or warning, he packs his car and heads south.

It’s a narrow thing, getting back across the US border at Peace Arch, but he has better ID this time. The dealer from the alley, the one who dealt in Blue, knew a guy. The network between criminals was still often beautiful.

He tries Portland again, where Blue never really took off for whatever reason, to try again to stay clean; but Denny-Dave isn’t around anymore, and for some reason that fucks him up. Did he steal Denny-Dave’s identity? Did Denny-Dave ever really exist? Did he become him?

The bridge network tells him nothing, barely acknowledges Denny-Dave existed. A few people remember a Dave, and a few remember a Denny, but no one seems to remember a Denny-Dave. 

He has ID to prove Denny-Dave’s existence, and that’s something. But the birthdate is permanently aged forward now, and the photo really is of him. No one knows the name David Colione. No one recognizes Denny-Dave. They only recognize him.

But on the other hand -- none of them recognize him as Andrew. Some greet him as David as though he’d been known to them as David all along. No one recognizes him as Jesse. He remains totally unsure as to whether they’re confused, or whether he is. He can’t tell if he’s too detached to follow the thread now, or if he was too detached back then, and the paranoia eats at him even without the meth taking him over.

He sets himself down at the foot of the bridge after a solid week of trying to find Denny-Dave and whittles a tiny sculpture out of a piece of driftwood. He feels like he’s waiting. He’s waiting for Denny-Dave to show up; he’s waiting for someone to tell him that Denny-Dave is real; he’s waiting for someone to tell him that _he’s_ real. That he’s Jesse Pinkman. That he’s David Colione. That he’s all of the above.

No one tells him anything. No one seems to see him there.

He whittles. He whistles. He’s waiting. He keeps waiting.

\---

Gale Boetticher is on the news. It’s been a year. The Heisenberg story never dies.

Mr. White’s voice is in his head again:

_Because I could not stop for Death_  
_He kindly stopped for me._

It had been one of the first things either one of them had said after that incident with the bathtub, and it had stuck with him. All this time. When he finally killed that fuckwad Todd, it had been the first coherent thought to cross his mind; and sure, Mr. White had been standing there -- but honestly, it was as much a part of him as anything else was at this point. Death kindly stops for him all the fucking time now.

Here it was kindly stopping in with a recap about Gale Boetticher. In case he’d forgotten.

He has an apartment again, and a legitimate job not funded by the blood money this time. At least, he hopes; he hasn’t heard from Spaul. But at the end of the day, it’s anyone’s guess who’s paying his bills. He wouldn’t be fucking surprised if Mr. White was still somehow fucking doing it from beyond the grave.

It’s his apartment. He can turn off the news.

He doesn’t.

He grips at the blankets. He pours another drink.

There’s a knock at the door.

He stares at it nervously, as though this was finally Death politely knocking way more fucking literally than he’s prepared to accept; but after a moment he creeps toward the door, settling his eye extremely nervously over the peephole -- sees a girl outside who looked far too kind to be either Death or the police.

He opens the door slowly, leaves the chain on. “Hey.”

“Hi.” She flashes a nervous smile. “Is this the residence of Dave Colione?”

He blinks. “I’m David Colione.”

“Oh.” She frowns, discouraged. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you.” She turns to leave, and he shouts, scrabbles at the chain to get it unlocked, opens the door wider.

“Hey -- are you looking for someone?”

“Yeah.” She turns slowly. “My dad’s name was David Colione. We lost track of him twenty years ago, but the family folklore says he’s in Portland. I’m making it my personal mission to see if he’s still around.” She gives a little wave, and he practically leaps out the door as she turns again to leave.

“Wait, hey -- did your dad go by Denny-Dave?”

She spins around. “Yes! He -- had this thing for Grand Slams, it was … a thing. Do you know him?”

“Ah -- yeah, actually.” His heart pounds faster; he runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, yeah, I met him a few months ago -- closer to a year ago I guess. I left Portland for a while, though, and when I came back I couldn’t find him again. No one seems to know what happened to him, I kind of--” He laughs wildly. “I kind of thought I’d made him up, to be honest.”

“I lose the thread as of about six months ago,” she agrees fervently, and she cracks open a folder in the palm of her hand. “People say I’m obsessive, but I don’t … care, to be honest.”

“Hey, you rock what you rock. He’s not even my dad and I’ve been looking for him. Listen, where was he last seen?”

“Under the bridges. Police came to talk to him, and no one’s seen or heard from him since -- only the police say they have absolutely no reports about any Dave Colione for years. I don’t want to sound like a … kook, or anything, but that seems weird to me. Just seeing what kind of groundwork I can lay without them.” She looks up suddenly. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

“God no,” he snorts. “Kill me first.”

She smiles kindly, and warmth tinges through his self-loathing. “Anyway, that means he definitely wasn’t taken in, but there are some concerns that these people weren’t actually police and were sent to warn him that some ... search was coming for him. I don’t know what the hell that means, and the source I got it from wasn’t reliable, but -- I guess I’d hoped he hadn’t skipped town. I don’t know where else to look. This is the only lead I have.”

He stares, swallows hard. “Try Albuquerque,” he says, voice dry and grating. “We used to talk about -- how going to Albuquerque would be something no one would ever expect, if you were being searched for.” She looks at him suspiciously, and he hastens to cover: “Right? Like -- who the fuck is ever on the run and says, ‘hey, let’s go to Albuquerque?’” He laughs dryly, nervously, and she stares blankly.

“Thanks.” She closes her folder. “I’ll try Albuquerque. Did you … know him well?”

“Uhm … I mostly just owe him a lot. We hung out pretty solid for a few months, when I was in a rougher patch. He taught me how to whittle. I’m, uh, a carpenter now. He was just a really good guy.” He shrugs. “Plus, same name -- what are the odds, right?”

Her eyelids flutter as she steps slowly backward, and he can read on her face all that she suspects; she’s gone before he can correct her.

_Because I could not stop for Death_  
_He kindly stopped for me._

Behind him, the Gale Boetticher newscast blares on.

He is still Jesse Pinkman.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a love story to Jesse Pinkman, who has had me absolutely distraught about his character for five seasons. I wanted such good things for him and I'm overjoyed that he survived to series end, but I don't think he actually 'survived' in any real sense. I strongly suspect that the end to his story is not a good one, but I can't bring myself to write him into a permanent downward spiral. The entire point of his character arc in the series was apparently to show just what it took to break a person -- psychologically, spiritually, intellectually. This was demonstrated very extremely in the last eight episodes where they seemed to systematically destroy him for the sake of some point they wanted to make. I'm clearly displeased (doesn't begin to cover it) with that direction, but there can be no doubt that at achieving their goal they succeeded very well. Where they went with Jesse's character at the end of it did not give him room to rebuild anything resembling spirit within himself. 
> 
> In that respect, this fic is a metaphor. The blue meth, Saul's influence, the legacy of learned violence, the money following him around -- literally, probably not so much. Figuratively -- there's no such thing as tabula rasa for Jesse. He didn't get to start over. I wanted something better for him. This is my optimistic interpretation. It follows him, but he breathes on. I wonder what Gilligan intended for him.


End file.
